John Monash

John Monash (27 June 1865-8 October 1931) was a General in the Australian Army who commanded the Australian Corps on the Western Front of World War I.

Biography
John Monash was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1865, the first-born son of Jewish immigrants. He graduated in engineering and law after a patchy university career, and took up a commission in the British Army in 1887. During World War I he served with some distinction at Gallipoli and, promoted to major-general, commanded the 3rd Division of the Australian Imperial Forces on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918. As lieutenant-general and corps commander from 1 June 1918 he was prominent both in halting the German final offensive in July, and in the last Allied counteroffensive in August 1918, when he led his troops to a series of unprecedented victories. After the war he organized the harmonious repatriation of 160,000 Australian soldiers. His reputation in the 1920s as perhaps the greatest living Australian reflected upon Australia's Jewish community as a whole, as it helped make anti-Semitism publicly unacceptable. He was Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University from 1923 to 1931, and Victoria's second university is named after him.